


Homecoming

by Caepio



Category: Ancient History RPF, Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Βίοι Παράλληλοι - Πλούταρχος | Parallel Lives - Plutarch
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Character Study, F/M, Home, Loss, Marriage, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27363238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caepio/pseuds/Caepio
Summary: No one’s going to make a home for her. She has to do it herself.
Relationships: Gaius Cassius Longinus/Junia Tertia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot I had this thing lying around until _someone_ (hi himbostratus) reminded me. So. Here you go. It is slightly less than one whole thing.

“You can make any changes you like.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I want you to feel at home here.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“This is your house too.”

Tertulla is silent.

It isn’t her house.

It wasn’t ever going to be her house, she thought, on that first night, after Cassius fell asleep and she lay awake in the dark, counting the cracks in an unfamiliar ceiling, the number of branches in unfamiliar frescos.

You might know, rationally, all through childhood, through the beginnings of adulthood - that marriage isn’t for _you_. You might understand it’s political. You might understand the importance of a business deal. 

But she’d seen them when they thought no one was looking. 

She’d seen the way her husband looked at her brother, the way the glance was returned. And she knew - This was more than politics, more than a business deal, and even less about her. 

It was better when Cassius was away. Easier to make something out of nothing. She could pretend hers was the only Genius that mattered. That the Lares on the altar valued her above her husband because she was _there_. Because every day since the first day - coin in her shoe, saffron veil enveloping - she’d leave something and pray: Make this more a home than the home I left.

Mothers don’t look at you the same, once you’ve left the house. They don’t look at you the same once you’re a part of someone else. You go home (your childhood home, your first home) and its not home. You have to build it again, for yourself, despite yourself. 

Understandable, why someone would want a wife. A wife’s job is to keep the house. Make a home.  
No one’s going to make a home for her. She has to do it herself. 

Cassius leaves. Brutus leaves. Tertulla doesn’t have to pretend anymore. But absence brings a different strangeness; all this time imagining herself alone, imagining this place as hers alone, and now that it is? She counts the cracks in the ceiling, the branches in the fresco, and finds there’s something missing when she can’t also count the breaths of the person beside her.

Familiarity makes a home. Day in day out, a life lived in patterns (chosen and forced). Even something imperfect, something that isn’t what you imagined, isn’t what you hoped for, can be longed for once it’s gone. 

She leaves two gifts on the altar now and isn’t sure which prayer is louder. 

Two years in wartime. Fighting day to day to hold on to things she still feels aren’t wholly _hers_. Things that are someone else’s, put in her care, but still all that she has. Duty. Virtue. Necessity. 

Her mark is everywhere in the house. Every decision, every economy. And Compitalia comes and for the first time she has to do it herself. _Make yourself a home, no one else will._

At what point does someone’s home stop being theirs? At what point does it belong to someone else? If he never comes home ( _Exile._ She tells herself. _I only mean exile._ ) Is this home still his? Would it still be hers? 

And then, of course, a day comes where it’s not a question anymore. 

Tertulla sits on the edge of the bed (too narrow before, too broad now) in the darkening room and stares at the wall and thinks: _You could go home again now. You could make your mother make a home for you again._

But she knows, once you’ve done that work for yourself, no one else can. 

She has roots here. Consequence of time, consequence of care. She made a home for herself, despite herself. The men left. She remained. 

Which has more value? The homes they left behind and she maintained? Or the battles they fought (and lost) for a home they left in other people’s hands? 

Whatever this place was at first, now it’s hers. And she’ll keep it, whatever comes.


End file.
